100 Books Like Versality

My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth. 

Why hopepunk, and why me? Look, it’s no surprise that you can look around today and find all sorts of indicators that we are entering Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Imagining a dystopian or grimdark future isn’t difficult; all you have to do is read the news. But I think that we are writing the history of the future right now, by the choices we make every day. Writing stories that present that optimistic view of the future is not just the right thing to do but necessary, at least to me. As Heinlein said, “A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun…”

I first became fascinated by artificial intelligence as a teenage Asimov fan being taught BASIC programming by my uncle. It then became the first professional interest I returned to as I emerged from the consuming process of caring for very young children and the voluntary work that went with it, which broadened my horizons. I was quick to see, and eager to explore further, parallels between the socialisation of young humans and what might be possible for machine minds.

I first became fascinated by artificial intelligence as a teenage Asimov fan being taught BASIC programming by my uncle. It then became the first professional interest I returned to as I emerged from the consuming process of caring for very young children and the voluntary work that went with it, which broadened my horizons. I was quick to see, and eager to explore further, parallels between the socialisation of young humans and what might be possible for machine minds.

Coming from two very different backgrounds gives Dean and I a unique ‘view’ of a topic that we are both hugely passionate about: artificial intelligence. Our work together has gifted us a broader perspective in terms of understanding the development of and the philosophy beneath what is coined as artificial intelligence today and where we truly stand in terms of its potential for good – and evil. Our book list is intended to provide a great starting point from where you can jump into this incredibly absorbing topic and draw your own conclusions about where the future might take us.

As a Chief AI Officer and Strategic AI Expert, I've earned the nickname "AI Whisperer" for my intuitive ability to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and real-world business applications. My fascination with cycles and patterns, which I explored deeply in my master's thesis on Kondratieff waves, led me to recognize AI's transformative potential long before it became mainstream. With over 25 years of experience blending business strategy, sales leadership, and technological innovation, I've helped countless organizations harness AI's power to revolutionize their operations. What truly sets my heart racing is seeing how AI innovations can unlock human potential.

I tell stories for the page and the screen (and sometimes to bribe my kid to brush her teeth). The stories I tell have one thing in common – they transport the reader to another world. For me, building a new world starts with building a new character – a narrator with strong opinions and a complicated past that will shape how the reader experiences their world. We don't experience the real world objectively – no matter how hard we try, our past, our feelings, and even our bodies affect how we experience the world. That's why the worlds I build and the stories I tell are all filtered through the particular truth of a bold narrator.

My passion for generative AI first ignited in 2016 when I spoke about it at a conference, and ever since then, I can’t stop! I've created an online course, a newsletter and even wrote a book to spread knowledge on this groundbreaking technology. As an instructor, I empower others to explore the boundless potential of generative AI applications. Day in day out, I assist clients in crafting their own generative AI solutions, tailoring them to their unique needs.

I was raised in a large family, and we were taught to be respectful, honest, and polite to everyone. I've never been able to understand the mind of a 'nasty' person or how a person can hurt another. When these people are brought to justice, how can we know they are telling the truth?

Expanding on this, I started thinking about Artificial Intelligence—could this be the creation that gives us the way to see into a person's mind; to find out what crime they have committed? But then I thought, what if the actual creator was a criminal? How would anyone even know? That was the route of my research which led to i4Ni being written.

I am a scientist, educator, successful entrepreneur, and author. I believe that human civilization is threatened by the wonderful and dangerous technologies that we created in the last two centuries: fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, gene editing, AI, and social media. As a creator of technologies, I feel responsible that more hasn’t been done to properly control them. My current mission is to sound an alarm about the potential tyranny of technology through my novels, 100 Years to Extinction and the sequel, 12 Years to AI Singularity, on my website and on social media. While the recommended books on my list are nonfiction, my fictional story presents the science and technology accurately as nonfiction would.